Tail White TIp

I just noticed this today that this seahorses tail was white and part of it was missing. No others are showing any signs of anything occurring to them. I'm thinking this is either tail rot or a injury but I'm not 100% sure so if anyone can help that would be great. Also a recommended treatment for the issue would help out.

For me, I consider this to be a bacteria infection due to water quality issues that will spread likely to the others if it is not rectified. For me, this means I haven't been getting all the uneaten food/detritus out of the tank and haven't been doing enough or large enough water changes.As for the present affected one, it needs to be placed in a hospital tank (with heavy aeration from open ended air line) with something like Furan II and slowly drop the temperature to 68°F to slow the bacteria growth until the antibiotics become effective. It WILL take quite some time to heal though so don't expect it to be OK in just a week or so.You might have to go through a second antibacterial protocol if it doesn't begin to heal, or, if it appears to be spreading.

Rayjay is right this is bacterial. Can you tell us what was your aquariums temperature was when you noticed this. Also what has been your cleaning protocol up to this point? What is the size of your aquarium and how many seahorses do you keep? Are there other tank mates? Do you use a uv sterilizer? All of the background on your aquarium is important. Sharing your story, helps everyone. Many people don't post, but come and read and learn. It is very important to do a big water change on your display aquarium, I recommend 40%, in a week I would do it again. Follow Rayjay s recommendation on placing your sick seahorse in a hospital tank and starting treatment. It looks like a pretty big bit of the tip was already lost.. I hope you can fight and save this horse.

H.comes and H.erectus, H. reidi

May your joy be as deep as the ocean,Your sorrows as light as the foam.

Thirding bacterial cause. Is this a juvenile? It looks to be on the smaller size, but I'm not sure about the scale. I've seen this happen when there is problems with either too high temperatures or nursery tanks that are a bit grungy. If it's a juvenile, I'd wipe down all the surface of the rearing tank and do some big water changes.

Tail rot can be really aggressive; it's usually caused by vibrio (though not exclusively). Lowering the temp to 68F over a couple hours will help curb vibrio. I wouldn't go more than two degrees an hour. Most seahorses shouldn't be above 74F due to their low resistance to vibrio.

I wouldn't use antibiotics on juveniles, assuming that is the case. Instead, try and clean/debribe the tail with paper towel and betadine. Do this out of the tank so none will drip into it, and hold the seahorse upright, which will keep any iodine from dripping onto the face of the seahorse.

I wouldn't use antibiotics on very young juveniles because you may end up creating superbacteria that will be resistant to antibiotics later. But if this is an older seahorse (say past 3 months old) then I would. I would treat separately for now, and wait to see how the others do.

Sorry I been busy I got these from a place and they came in very bad, and they are juveniles. I am using the betadine and it has stopped the progression of the bacteria. Also as Tami, and ray said I lowered the temperature to 68 they are between 2-2.5 inches. I'm not to sure on what age they are currently. I will keep you updated on this.

Temp 68 (Was 69.5 This is the temp the problem started at ) Salinity 1.023Nitrate, Nitrite, and Ammonia 0

12 in a 65 gallon

As for water changes I'm doing 50% 1-2 times a week Seahorse Only Tank UV Sterilizer

I think I hit on everything let me know if there is something that I am missing.

It would be my guess that even though the seahorses are very small, 12 in a 65g tank would most likely deteriorate water quality in short order, even with your previous temperature of 69.5°.What are your plans for re homing the excess seahorses as they get larger?Seahorse tank water quickly degrades more rapidly than a reef tank with fish in it as they are very selective most times about the food pieces they eat, preferring to just eat what looks good in their eyes, not yours.Also, when they snick the food, they masticate it, passing micro particulate matter out through the gills into the water column.All this creates ideal conditions for increased nasty bacterial growth, and seahorses most times are not able to deal with these levels like most other marine fish.There are NO test kits available to the hobbyist that can tell you when the water quality has become problematic.All the test kits we DO have access to can read in the best range, but that isn't much help if the nasty bacteria are getting to plaque levels as far as seahorses are concerned. IMO, it comes down to preventive maintenance.

Discus, you have been keeping seahorses for five years? Sounds like you have the basics down. How long did you have these new juvies before you had the problem? Glad you are having some success treating!😊 do you offer live food? And do you enrich your frozen mysis? How are the rest doing? Run through your tank and just recheck everything see if some problem area slipped past you. How's your pH? Do you have any macro in your tank? Personally I like having macro. Do you have bare bottom or sand? I have sand but many people like bare bottom tanks. Can you post a pic of a full tank shot? Maybe we can help spot a problem area. Also what i the flow and turn over in your tank? Do you think you have any dead areas? Good luck! Hope you can get your girl past this!

H.comes and H.erectus, H. reidi

May your joy be as deep as the ocean,Your sorrows as light as the foam.

Ive been keeping them more then 5 Years likely close to 10 years, I got these about 10-12 days ago when they came in from the breeder( Not going to say any names) they refused to eat anything that was frozen which I was told they were on frozen then called and they were then stated no we feed them baby brine. Honestly I never had this issue and I know for a fact I did not start this issue. Right now they are on a combination of enriched mysis, cyclops, and frozen baby brine, with live brine mixed in with it. For the tank it is a bare bottom which makes it easy for me to clean out any access food, forgot to mention I do suck out all access food from the bottom every day. I agree with you I will always have macro there is macro in the tank as well as in the refugium. All other seahorses look perfectly fine without a single issue at all which I hope it stays that way. The tank has decent flow but with these being so small its not where I want it to be or they would get blown off the perch easily.. Ill try to get a photo but likely you wont be able to see anything the LED bleaches out the photo with blue.

I would avoid using any frozen food, I found it to be a source of bacterial and even more if the frozen food was enriched.Try to feed them live brineshrimp, enrich the less you can to avoid any extra "food" for bacteria.

There was a bad season many years ago when the outbreak of tail/mouth erosion was something common at my facilities. I deduced that the lack of food was the main problem, seahorses were weak and tend to fall prone to that disease and the second cause I found was the enriched frozen food I was using. I changed the frozen food brand... solved the live food problem and the tail/mouth erosion was erradicated.

So those seahorses are weak and malnourished, the had some time with that problem. The good news is that the new holding condition that they have with you helped to slow or pause the erosion progress. Try to feed them as good as you can... keep a clean enviroment, avoid stress (keep an eye on temp and water chemestry changes) and they may survive.

Update the problem Is eradicated and finally they are gaining weight, Thankfully I found a marine biologist that studied seahorses was fairly close to me that helped me out with curing this issue. Also the post from other members helped out, the cure I used was the iodine as a topical, which was changed out to Debride that stopped the tail rot in its tracks basically. Then using Kanamycian powder in the water which I have used for the past 8 days, I have not seen any signs of them getting it or any signs of the ones that had it getting worst. Also it did not seem to put much stress onto them because they still acted normal and ate just fine. I'm hoping now I got this issue under control with these, at least it was a good learning experience, not one I planned on but everything seems to be under control now.